We can run custom searches of our data according to your specifications. These searches can help you prepare a report for your board, identify funding partners, investigate possible new areas of funding activity, or identify potential grantees.

About the Data

We have developed broadly adopted standards that accurately reflect the work of the global philanthropy community.

Philanthropy Classification System

A taxonomy of philanthropy, our classification system describes the work of grantmakers, recipient organizations, and the philanthropic transactions between those entities, capturing and indexing the work of the sector on a global scale.

GeoTree Geographic Classification Tool

Developed by Foundation Center's geographers, GeoTree is a geographic classification tool that enables grantmakers to apply Geographic Area Served coding to their giving data, as well as serving as a geographic taxonomic standard and reference tool for the field.

What We Do With the Data

Collect

Clean

Code and Index

Share

We collect data from the IRS, through our e-reporting program, and in the cultivation of special data sets. Our new data management system provides us with the capacity to process over 2,000,000 grant records annually.

Data are validated and normalized as they are entered into the system. We have virtually eliminated hand-keyed data entry.

The data we collect are coded in an automated process with review by data experts. The automated coding process is trained for accuracy with a supervised machine learning model.

What Data Can Inform Your Efforts?

Foundation Center aggregates and enhances data on behalf of the field so that individual organizations don't have to build their own data sets from scratch. We make foundation and grants data available in an accessible and highly visual format through our APIs and data visualization platforms, and license data that we have cleaned, coded, and standardized for use by other organizations in analysis, reports, and tools. We also build custom APIs for pulling our data into a foundation's grants management software and other applications.

If you're starting a project that requires trusted data about philanthropy, please contact us. We may have what you need or can work with you to find it. For more detailed information about the sources of data used in our work, please see our Data Sources page.

DATA-DRIVEN TOOLS, CONTENT-RICH PLATFORMS

Knowledge Services

Knowledge Services are data-driven tools and content-rich platforms developed by Foundation Center for funders and their networks, consultants, advisors, and grantees.